Research Assistant

About us

Founded in 1915, the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) is one of the UK's largest institutions for research and teaching on Russia, the Baltics, and Central, Eastern and South-East Europe. Our mission is to create in-depth knowledge of Russia and Eastern Europe in regional, comparative, transnational, and global contexts, and to promote and disseminate an understanding of our region to the wider world; developing multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multi-method approaches to knowledge creation and to teaching; and to enhance the development of area studies at UCL and among the wider academic community.

We offer undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research programmes, both within our four core disciplines (Economics and Business; Politics and Sociology; Languages and Culture; and History), as well as interdisciplinary programmes (for example, our BA in History, Politics& Economics).

About the role

In the arts and culture in the UK there is an increasing emphasis on accountability, requiring organisations to evaluate the social impact of their projects. Traditionally, economic evaluation such as cost-benefits analyses, cost-effectiveness and cost-utility have been used to assess the value of firms and organisations’ activities. Since early 2000, a new perspective has developed - namely the Social Return On Investment (SROI). SROI is a methodology aimed at measuring broader socio-economic outcomes. It considers the views of multiple stakeholders and translates company outputs and outcomes into a single monetary indicator. We know that creative industries have a wide range of societal impact that are difficult to quantify. In fact the literature has discussed the economic, social, health and wellbeing, education, lifelong learning impact of the sector. Both practitioners and the literature have flagged that the cultural sector is lagging behind in the identification of appropriate SROI, largely because of the complexity of placing a monetary value on the benefits of culture to individuals or groups of people. This project features the partnership between UCL academics and Creative United, that is an organisation that supports the arts, cultural and creative industries through ten business support programmes [e.g. Creative Industry Finance and Prosper North].

The project aims at exploring how the SROI methodologies might be applied to the creative and cultural industries. In particular, one of its objectives is to co-develop a functioning SROI methodology that more accurately captures the social value of Created United programmes.

We are looking for a research assistant (RA) to support our project. The present project has a one-year duration, i.e. 12 months, and the RA position is open for 10 months. The requested time commitment is 30% FTE per 10 months. The workload might be unevenly distributed along the term, so that some weeks will be more work-intense than others.

About you

We are looking for applicants with a Master’s degree in social science or related disciplines. You will need some experience with social science research, data collection or analysis, and Excel skills. Bulk of the work can be done remotely, but you are expected to visit UCL SSEES and our partner organisation Creative United regularly.

Required skills:

• Commitment to high-quality research
• Ability to search relevant literature and extract the main messages
• Quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Organisational skills
• Knowledge of literature and methodology on SROI would be an advantage.

What we offer

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

• 41 Days holiday (including 27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days) Hybrid Final Salary Pension Scheme
• Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
• On-Site nursery
• On-site gym
• Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

As London’s Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world’s talent. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. We therefore particularly encourage applications from candidates who are likely to be underrepresented in UCL’s workforce. These include people from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds; disabled people; LGBTQI+ people; and for our Grade 9 and 10 roles, women. You can read more about our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion here : https://www.ucl.ac.uk/equality-diversity-inclusion/